Killer Military Robot Arms Race Underway?

coondoggie writes to tell us NetworkWorld is reporting that one researcher seems to think that a military robot arms race may be imminent between both governments and terrorists. "We are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race and it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber, according to professor Noel Sharkey, from the Royal United Services Institute Department of Computer Science. [...] Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill, according to the professor."

Comments

obligated

[liquidmpls]

I for one welcome our new killer robot overlords yeah sorry, i just needed to get it out of the way to make room for the real discussion about skynet

Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[s20451]

"Is that an aibo? Man, I haven't seen one of those since ..." BLAM!

Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[stoolpigeon]

That's funny - but it's also true. We are a long, long way out from terrorists using robots. And they don't need to go high tech like that when they can round up some local people who are mentally handicapped and rig them up. That looks to have been working pretty well for them. Why add the cost of building a robot that will be spotted right off?

Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[misleb]

The fact that the USA loves to criminally meddle in other states affairs is quite enough proof that US is a terrorist state.

I think the fact that the initial campaign on Baghdad was called "Shock and Awe" was a pretty big give away. I mean, isn't that exactly what terrorism is? Shock and awe? A quick, violent, show of force with plenty of collateral damage which is intended to demoralize your opponent.

War: Well funded acts of terrorism.
Terrorism: Poorly funded acts of war.

Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[rtb61]

Generally speaking, you can more stupidly but effectively create a terrorist force by simply creating a high stress constant threat of life existence, complete with random humiliation and the brutal loss of family members all with no hope of a better future. Pretty much the situation that has been created in Iraq.

Those kinds of stresses inevitably lead to the mental break down of individuals making them far more susceptible to those who would manipulate them into self destructive behaviours. Of course the worst thing about that kind of sustained flagrant abuse, is it will create a generation of people and take decades to resolve.

The track record for creating terrorists/freedom fighters by this route of invasion and brutal occupation, is pretty much rock solid, with genocide (the substantial eradication and eviction of the indigenous population) being the only way to resolve the situation (the current choice ?), other than of course getting the fuck out, paying reparations and making sure all those who committed crimes during the occupation are caught, prosecuted and convicted (it only makes sense as you really do not want these deranged individuals back in the general population without extensive rehabilitation).

A modest proposal

[Ilan Volow]

If robotic innocent civilians can be manufactured to replace the humans blown up by military bots and suicide bomber bots, then no one has to die.

The future

[Eudial]

Yes, I look into my crystal sphere, and in it I see the future comments of this thread:

* Yes, but do they have frickin' laser beams attached to their head?
* In soviet Russia, Robots arm YOU!
* I, for one, welcome our new gun-toting robot overlords (points for being uncomfortably close to the truth)
* References to the matrix or terminator series and/or I robot.

Cats and newspapers

[Harmonious Botch]

Until someone can build an automatic vacuum cleaner that does not try to eat my cat, or an automated lawnmower that does not trim the newspaper, I'm not going to worry.
Even if the tech does reach that level, building a military bot is another level beyond that. And somehow, I think that it is not going to be well understood by guys whose concept of hi-tech is a retractable box knife.
It's gonna be a longgg time before I worry.

Re:Cats and newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

Until someone can build an automatic vacuum cleaner that does not try to eat my cat, or an automated lawnmower that does not trim the newspaper, I'm not going to worry. I'm not quite sure I understand your reasoning. You seem to be making the following points:
1) Current autonomous robots damage their surroundings and are hard to control.
2) The military (and possibly terrorists) want to put really big guns on autonomous robots.
3) Therefore you are NOT going to worry.

Either I misinterpreted you, or you have an interesting view of what to worry about.

Re:Cats and newspapers

[batquux]

Until someone can build an automatic vacuum cleaner that does not try to eat my cat, or an automated lawnmower that does not trim the newspaper, I'm not going to worry. That is precisely why this does worry me.

Re:No!!

[moderatorrater]

Either way we're fucked.

Gundam Wing talked about this.

[Coraon]

Long and short, when we let robots do our fighting for us, it becomes so cheep to make war that its cheaper to make war then peace. his is why I feel that people should always be required for the front line, war has to suck so it will always be a last resort.

Not to worry.

[CSMatt]

Killbots have a preset kill limit. Send wave after wave of your men at them until they shut down.

Re:I usually frown upon this...

[russ1337]

It was the last part that freaked me out: "robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill, according to the professor "

I sure hope this professor is a nice person.

3-2-1 ACTIVATE

[Mushdot]

I think this is a natural progression for nations with an organised military. Once the basics are down machines can be churned out much quicker than we can train humans and you don't need to be as accurate and quick thinking as a human would be - sheer numbers and a shotgun approach would suffice and so who has the greatest manufacturing capacity would have the advantage.

Looking further into the future I'm sure wars will be fought totally on a technological basis e.g. hacking networks to shut down utilities and enemy soldiers to disable them etc. Maybe even further along wars will be won and lost without loss of human life - "Ok we surrender, we have no food, water or power and our Unisols are pointing their guns at us. You can have our continent."

I may have the wrong sci-fi series but I'm sure I remember a Star Trek episode where wars were fought by computer and afterward the required number of human casualties were euthanised to balance the books? Maybe at that point the geek shall inherit the earth and FPS skills will finally be recognised for what they are :-)

Futurism isn't

[Merovign]

1) Robot suicide bombers isn't exactly an ethical step down for bombers - and it lacks martyr value.

2) I imagine fear of friendly fire will keep handlers at the controls of robots for quite some time.

3) I think there have been a few robotic sentries made that act autonomously but constantly report and can be overridden (S. Korea, perhaps?)...

4) Unsettling thought the implications may be, eventually I think robotic, autonomous war machines will be built - and for the builders, it will be quite a plus. Probably a bit of a downer for everyone else.

It may be seen in retrospect as another of those "Roman Conquest" moments where a powerful, advanced culture stomps all over more primitive cultures - but the survivors end up better off, at least for a while. History, like sausages, is a process whose benefits are better (more comfortably) enjoyed than understood.

Re:And yet, for all the warnings

[Foobar of Borg]

Unless they are really clever and make them out of sticks and rubber bands.

In other news, an American robot army base was struck by the hitherto unknown militant Islamic faction known as al-MacGyver.

I develop these systems, this story is 4 pageviews

[Jtheletter]

I've been watching this story slowly spread around the net today since I develop for some of the systems referred to. The whole thing is a bunch of hand-waving 'OMG teh robotz will kills us all!' page rank generating crap.
First, very few robotic systems in the whole world right now are even weaponized, yet we're supposed to believe automated killing is "just around the corner". Second, no military anywhere has deployed fully automated (no human on trigger/joystick) weaponized systems ever, yet we're to expect legions of them very soon. Third, "terrorists" will supposedly get their hands on these systems and reverse engineer them to their advantage - do I even need to explain how improbable this is? Military and private research funded to the tune of billions haven't even been able to develop these systems yet, but we're supposed to believe some terrorist organizations with almost no funding and little access to high-level engineers will be able to understand and rework these same nonexistent systems. Is it impossible? No. I don't doubt that given enough time eventually some extremist group will have a CS PhD/MS level member who could figure something out. That still doesn't negate the fact that no groups have even captured and reverse-engineered current robotic systems, which are much less advanced than this alleged future autonomous platform would be. And finally, if one of the major world governments developed and deployed fully autonomous armed robots, does anyone really think there wouldn't be a remote shutdown/disable sequence or other back door?
It's fun to discuss possible dystopian Terminator style futures, but it annoys me to no end when some researcher or professor says we're all imminently doomed and the net runs away with the idea. We're still very far from fully automated systems with weapons. Even US tanks, which have highly advanced target acquisition and recognition systems, aren't fired except by a human operator. You'll see fully automated targeting and firing in manned vehicles long before you see it in unmanned platforms IMHO.

And to stem off people who point out that many UAVs fly totally unmanned, with weapons, and with no joystick control - there are multiple ground operators constantly monitoring and updating mission parameters for each of these UAVs, also all firing sequences are still human in the loop.

Killer Robot Arms?

[CaptCrunk]

What's next? Killer robot legs? What happens when they get the whole killer robot put together? I answer: Mecha-Streisand.

Terrorists don't make 155 mm artillery shells...

[jhRisk]

To those that challenge whether terrorists would use robots in the future, I disagree.

Terrorists don't make 155 mm artillery shells or munitions of any type. They rig what's available and hence IED, VBIED and other such improvised weapons are based on the highly available and cheap unspent munitions. Therefore it's not inconceivable that if sufficient "modern" militaries use robots in the future terrorists will be fashioning their new weapons out of those pieces instead. It will not be as good as the original, they're not going to build them from scratch nor somehow innovate since there's no need to. Just like their current versions of improvised weapons it'll be what they can slap together to at least scare if not also do some harm. It sounds crazy but I can see militaries in the future abandoning the "robot casualties" in war before learning how they can be used against them. After all, we don't seem to learn much from history and it'll likely be much like weapons caches left behind in past wars and other mistakes from a lack of foresight on our part.

Re:Nonsense

[Chris Burke]

Why would I, a terrorist, go to all the effort of developing and building a sophisticated machine when I can can just blow stuff up?

Well in a battle between a nation-state's military and a guerrilla force, "sophisticated" is relative and the arms race can be neck-and-neck while both sides still operate at completely different levels of sophistication.

Look at the arms race between the IEDs used by insurgents in Iraq and our army -- they go from simple stashes of explosives buried under ground, to re-purposed mines in stacks to even shaped charges, while we go from armored Humvees to MRAPs. They're still basically using cobbled together piles of high explosives, while we're using extremely expensive vehicles, and we're trying to come from behind in this race.

Or the terrorist equivalent of our cruise missiles -- an old station wagon stuffed with explosives and driven by a would-be martyr.

Similarly, a "sophisticated" robot or the terrorists might be a wheeled pallet with a simple electric motor and some kind of remote control (even a thin wire based one to prevent jamming or source tracking like they do now with IEDs) that can carry a pile of explosives into the line of police recruits or next to the checkpoint. While our robot has to be something with complicated vision and maneuvering and fire control systems, and that might put the two robots on somewhat equal footing.

Of course in the absolute sense of terrorists actually trying to match the technology we deploy, that's simply insane, just as much as it is for them to use APCs or cruise missiles when there are much simpler but from their standpoint equally effective methods. In this sense you're absolutely right.

Also, I'm with you on having autonomous guns that make their own decisions on when to fire is a very bad idea. You can have the robot decide how to shoot, even exactly when and where. But the question of whether the robot shoots at all should be decided by a human.